~ Pontifex minimus

Keegan’s Challenge

I hope that everyone reading a blog like this has read the late John Keegan’s Face of Battle. In 1976, Keegan interrupted the quiet field of military history with some rude questions: Why was it that so many “battle pieces,” however detailed and colourful they sounded, did not explain what happened and how? Just where did the idea of the decisive battle come from? How much did we really know about famous battles? Using a few carefully chosen examples, he demonstrated how conventionalized and unrealistic many stories about battles were, even those by “serious historians” writing “technical accounts.” And then he suggested that two things had to be done: historians needed to study the “battle piece” as a genre and consider the tropes and assumptions which shaped it, and they needed to ask what individuals and small groups actually did in battle. He then explained that he did not have the energy, skills, and ambition to write a history of the battle piece as genre. Thus the next three chapters of his book are studies of what happened on three different battlefields in northern France, beginning with a sketch of the strategic situation and the course of the battle then narrowing in to focus on how and why the men on both sides fought. He borrowed some exciting new ideas from psychology and sociology and literary criticism, and added a fifth chapter with an extended comparison between soldiering and mountaineering to make the point that for the last century or so combat had come to demand more and more of soldiers to the point that it was difficult to envision what a clash between two modern armies would look like, even before the first nuclear weapon went off.

Keegan was half successful, which is as much as any of us can hope for. A whole field of military history dedicated to asking how combat worked sprang from the earth at his call. It is now widely accepted that how and why armies fight is at least as interesting as who wins or where they are recruited from. But the response to his call that battle pieces should be studied as literature and not just mined for facts was much quieter. He himself sometimes chose not to ask awkward questions if something in his sources made for a good read: his account of Alexander in The Mask of Command more or less swallows Arrian’s picture of Darius the coward in one bite, without asking whether it could be just as misleading as British stereotypes about martial races and cowardly Italians, or whether Arrian might be using his experience in the Roman army and reading of later tactical handbooks to help fill out his main sources.

If one speaks to historians over coffee or in the breaks at conferences, its not too hard to find ones who say frankly that they don’t know how to use ancient histories and chronicles to get at what actually happened on a battlefield, so they focus on other questions. There is a widespread feeling that many of these stories are shaped at least as much by literary pressures as by anything which people in the battle saw and heard and felt, and that without alternative sources which have been less polished to shape, its hard to separate convention and reality. Some medievalists like Anne Curry are focusing on archives and letters and other primary sources in hopes of escaping the limits of the battle piece. But attempts to nail down just what was conventionalized in different battle pieces, and how people drew on earlier stories as they struggled to make sense of the confusing and horrifying things which happen in combat, are harder to find. One can find a few comments here and there in studies of the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions or Diodorus Siculus, but I don’t know of any general studies.

The first chapter of The Face of Battle ends with two challenges. Historians, gamers, and re-enactors have more than met the second. But the first awaits the scholarly hero who is willing to step out of the ranks and take it on.

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3 thoughts on “Keegan’s Challenge”

your posts are almost always inspiration, or reminds me themes on which I work on or contemplate. Firstly, the battle narrative, role of battles in war are very good researched in Archeology of Violence (Pierre Clastres), War Before Civilizations (Lawrence H. Keeley) and in one recent collective monography from Aarhaus (I have to find title). Main idea of these book is, in struggle of societes sources are often main factor behind victory, not technology or tactics (which is little bit controversial and not always the rule).

The mention about Persians is kind a red flag for me. I really have to complete article about Persian army, or my book about Xenophon, where I analyze evolution and tactics of Persian army. Especially, that one Canadian thesis about combined arms warfare in antiquity (as one of things, mainly opinions of Richard A. Gabriel about inefficiant, modest possibilities of Persian army) gave me notion, inspiration to look more for this. For an example battle at Cunaxa 401 BC in primary sources (I think Frontinus) we have battle plan of Persians, Artaxerxes II. hold center back, wants to encircle enemies. My analysis of this battle, Persian army reveals, that Persian armies were efficient, knew combined armed tactics (which existed at least in LBA and certainly in EIA). Greek hoplite armies hadn’t always upper hand, Persians employed heavy infantry from Caria, Lycia, Lydia, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt.

In Cunaxa battle (as in the Gaugamela battle) we know from primary sources (Plutarch, Xenophon etc.) that Persians had companies of heavy infantry, cavalry at interval in one line, guess why? I think parallel with Byzantine tactic is obvious, cavalry attacks, trying to make breach of line, confusion, than attacks again, or retreat for protection of heavy infantry (at Cunaxa, kings is among Carians, they are always hoplites). I’m already hearing the yelling of impropable, because in most western sources exists somekind philosophy of warfare (by Hegel evolution of history), first bronze age, then Greeks, then Romans, Byzantines etc.

East (except China) is almost always petrified, old, inefficient, weak, but one of my research questions about EIA is role of weapons in evolution of tactics. I don’t believe, that Persians started to change weapons and tactics mostly in time of Alexander or 4th CE BC. How can they defeat all others, create empire? (even with help of Medes) Tempting thought is (I have on article about it from 2003), that Persian bows, quivers (Elamite type) were better, than others (except Scythian bow). Persian bows were from steel/iron?

What about role of cavalry? Skirmishing even against long Lydian spears or nomads from Central Asia? Or Persian cavalryman had dual role, skirmishing, then close contact wih javelin, or saber (in sarcophagus from Clazomenai I think, we have pictures of quite long cavalry sabers of riders. Again another parallel unthinkable for most of academics, sabres are deadly efficient as we know from Napoleonic wars). I think saber is more responsible for creating of Persian empire, than Cyrus reforms, actions (one of my hypothesis which needs veryfing). Today is certain, that Persian innovates their weapons and tactics, but we need more details and facts, new discoveries. Not just my hypothesis and thoughts.

Thanks Pavel. Part of it is that if I talk too much about my thesis on my blog, I will never finish it 😦 I only have so much “writing about war in the Achaemenid empire” energy.

I am not sure what to make of the way that the Scythians used short akinakai but not many long swords. They had axes if they wanted to ride past people hacking, but long curved swords let people do some nasty tricks. Russ Mitchell has written about some of the ones he learned from fencers in, I think, Romania.

Also, I have some pieces on Achaemenid history waiting to be printed. One of them is secret but I will announce it here as soon as the publisher does! Young academics can get in trouble for boasting about publications before they appear.